Baby incubator is cost-effective, collapsible & portable

The incubator is destined for use in harsh environments, in domestic and overseas remote regions, as well as disaster zones and refugee camps.

Current designs of incubators are expensive and cumbersome. A better, lower cost product is needed to keep a pre-term infant safely incubated, whilst being compact enough to store and transport to differing regions. mOm presents a lower level of investment for clinics in both developed and developing world markets like Africa and Australia.

Morgan IAT’s engineers are also developing sterile and disposable infant compartments as an alternative to cleaning, resulting in quicker device set-up and lower contamination costs.

Howard Clarke, Chairman and Research Director, Morgan IAT, commented: “The mOm Incubator project allows us to expand our skills and knowledgebase into another sector of the IEC 60601 Medical Electrical Equipment Safety standard. Although the incubator industry is well established with its own collateral standard (IEC 60601-2-16), the nature of this development raises some new and interesting challenges when compared with a traditional incubator design, which is what we enjoy about this type of project.”

Simple and quick to set-up, mOm will weigh less than 10kg. Measuring approximately 650x400x300mm in size (expanded), it will collapse to facilitate low-cost shipping to areas where standard incubators are unavailable. The supporting ends can be removed from the collapsible central compartment to facilitate the compartment’s cleaning or replacement.

Morgan IAT will develop James Roberts’ original design that differs from other incubators by removing the risk of liquid-related hazards normally present with electronics underneath the mattress.

To optimise mOm’s thermo-dynamic design Morgan IAT is partnering Concentrated Heat and Momentum (CHAM), a consultancy and software house specialising in computer simulation of fluid-flow and heat-transfer processes using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).